


Everything Else

by Shiny22Snivy



Category: No Straight Roads (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Not Beta Read, Parent-Child Relationship, i guess?, i just want good things for yinu man, i wrote this totally on impulse, im not even sure if this is any good i just wanted to be artsy, not even beta written where am i, shes not a good mother but shes not a bad one either, yinus mother is. well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:15:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26430229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiny22Snivy/pseuds/Shiny22Snivy
Summary: and you play 'til it's perfect, you play 'til you acheyou play 'til the strings or your fingernails break.
Relationships: Yinu (No Straight Roads) & Yinu's Mother (No Straight Roads)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 93





	Everything Else

When Yinu plays piano, it’s like everything else in the world goes away.

It’s funny, she thinks. The stage is always so big and the audience is always so numerous and Yinu is such a little, little girl, but she’s never afraid. When Yinu plays piano, the music fills the air and whisks her off to another place, somewhere far, far away from the crowds and the ornate stages and the incomprehensible grown-up talk of the important NSR grown-ups that she has given up even pretending to understand, and resembles the embrace of her Mama's arms.

When Yinu plays piano, she thinks about Mama.

Mama has always been there. Mama has always been by Yinu’s side. Mama does all the important grown-up things that Yinu doesn’t understand, so that Yinu can play piano for NSR. Mama was the one who taught her piano. Mama was the one to take Yinu’s small, child’s hands in her great, warm red ones and gently guide them over the keys, the one who would always remind her to keep her fingers curved, the one who would tell her more times than she could count what a wonderful, wonderful pianist she is.

When Yinu plays piano, she isn’t scared.

Natura Concert Hall is big, and Yinu’s voice echoes when she shouts on the stage, and when she performs there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of eyes all watching her at the same time, but she isn’t scared. Because Mama always knows what to do. Mama scares away anyone who wants to hurt Yinu (which is a lot of people, at least according to Mama.) Mama even scares Yinu sometimes. But that’s okay, because that’s what Mamas do.

When Yinu plays piano, she feels very, very alone.

When everything else in the world disappears, Yinu is left on her own. Even the feeling of being in Mama’s arms is a strange far-away not-feeling that doesn't really seem real from up on the stage, at her gilded white piano, with the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of eyes upon her. At the centre of it all, Yinu is just a lonely little girl. No matter how many times she is told how much of a wonderful, wonderful little girl she is, Yinu doesn't really feel like she’s had the chance to be a little girl at all.

Alice and Puddles and General Stragovich and Mama are all well and good, but Yinu still feels very, very, very alone.

Even when Mama lifts her up, ugers her to keep playing, to keep playing and playing and the sound of the chaos below her is so loud and so foreign, she almost forgets about her concert being hijacked.

Mama is angry. Far, far angrier than Yinu has ever seen her. Yinu is scared, oh so very scared, and upset, and angry, and she says things she doesn't really mean at all, as little girls are prone to do. She would like to say she just wants to go back to being on stage, alone with her piano, with the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of eyes watching her, but she doesn’t even know if she wants to do that. So she plays, because that’s all she knows how to do. She plays until her fingers hurt, until her throat hurts from shouting how much she _hates them all,_ until she can’t anymore.

Because she’s falling out of the sky, and Mama is holding her so tight she can hardly breathe.

Yinu doesn’t cry. Because she’s a brave little girl, and brave little girls don’t cry. But the sight of her broken piano almost makes her want to.

Mama is still crying, and shouting, and oh so very angry, but Yinu doesn’t care anymore. All she wants to do is play the piano. So she does.

She plays a soft, simple melody that feels empty and hollow and weird, because Yinu also feels empty and hollow and weird. Even with the roof caved in, and the lights all broken, and Mama looming over the hijackers, it’s almost like everything in the world has stopped to listen.

And Mama stops being angry anymore.

Mama has always been by Yinu’s side. She would guide her from over her shoulder, encourage her whenever she was upset, play all the low notes that she couldn’t reach. Always. Even now.

When Yinu plays piano with her Mama, it’s like everything else in the world goes away.


End file.
